Skills Development

The Sustainable Development Goals underline the role of skills generation for work, entrepreneurship, employment, livelihoods and development. The private sector has a crucial role to play both in the design and delivery of skills development. The engagement of private sector actors can enhance market-relevant employability skills of students and trainees, especially disadvantaged groups like youth and women. In turn, the business community gains access to a highly-skilled workforce that significantly improves competitiveness and productivity. 

Investing in human capital is central for achieving inclusive and sustainable growth, as qualified labor is key factor of production with advancing technologies and globalization.

The private sector needs skilled labour to increase its productivity and maintain its competitiveness.

Providing skills to disadvantaged and vulnerable has a significant impact on development increasing access to job opportunities.

IICPSD conducts research on inclusive business approaches to skills design and delivery, and draws lessons and insights from field-tested models

Our Work

IICPSD offers evidence-based knowledge, advisory, and partnership services supporting the expansion of job opportunities for the disadvantaged through increased engagement of the private sector in skills development. We do so by analysing successful examples of private sector-led or public-private partnership skills training initiatives. We help develop general and sectoral toolkits to guide the practitioners on how to engage the private sector in skills development for employment. Additionally, we provide project development and implementation support to countries and regions. 

One of our partnerships includes IBM Digital - Nation Africa, which aims to provide free skills development programs using a cloud-based learning platform to as many as 25 million African youths over the period of five years— enabling digital competence and nurturing innovation in Africa. 

IICPSD’s partnership for the “Skills, Employment, and Entrepreneurship Development (SEED) for Inclusive Growth” project aims at increasing jobs and livelihood opportunities for the disadvantaged, including migrants and refugees, through leveraging the role of markets and the private sector in skills development. 

SDG AI Lab is a joint initiative of UNDP Nature, Climate and Energy Team, Finance Sector Hub and IICPSD, which has a mission to harness the potential of frontier technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for sustainable development. The Lab contributes to strengthening UNDP’s internal capacity to respond to the increasing demand for digital solutions through provision of research, development and advisory support.